Introduction

Spring Semester 2001 The Civil and Environmental Engineering Department (CEE) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) offered EQE 693, Environmental Risk Assessment, a three-credit graduate course, completely by electronic methods.  There were no face-to-face meetings of the class.  The instructor, Robert A. Perkins (hereafter using first person), is an Associate Professor of CEE. The UAF Graduate School, as part of an initiative to place graduate courses "on-line," provided funding of $5000.  After some background material about distance and electronic education, this paper describes the methods used, the result, and the cost of "putting EQE 693 on-line."  Lastly, some personal "lessons learned" and suggestions are made.

This was the second offering of Environmental Risk Assessment at UAF.  The course number "693" indicates it is a special topics class. The environmental engineering program, which is in CEE, plans to propose it as a regular course, at which time it will be given a different course number. The subject matter of the course, environmental risk assessment, is the processes of estimating the probability and severity of adverse human health effects due to chemicals in the environment.  A further description is found in the Syllabus. (An electronic reader should be able to click on the hyperlink.  For paper readers, the URL's of the hyperlinks are found in the appendix.)

The student demographics for EQE 693 are different than other CEE graduate courses.  About half the EQE 693 students have undergraduate degrees in science - biology and geology are the commonest undergraduate degrees, rather than engineering. About half the students are not seeking a graduate degree, but take courses to increase their professional skills. One CEE course that does have similar demographics is EQE 649, Hazardous and Toxic Waste Management, and that course is used for some comparisons below.

The class demographics were:  17 students enrolled of which 15 students completed.  The two students that withdrew stated personal reasons unrelated to the course.  All 15 students were four-year college graduates, 8 with engineering degrees, 7 with other degrees such as, environmental science, chemistry, biology, and geology. Five live outside the UAF commute area, but an additional 3 said they could not have taken the course in the classroom. 7 student said they would have taken the course, had it been offered in the classroom.  That is the same number that took the class when it was last offered at UAF in 1999.

TOC Review of Distance Education